Ministry of Education rolls out the Form One Initiative

The Ministry of Education has embarked on an initiative to address the issue of underperformance among secondary school entrants. The initiative is being spearheaded by the Curriculum Division of the Ministry of Education. Speaking on its merits, the Honourable Anthony Garcia, Minister of Education said the Form One Initiative was conceived in response to data from the 2016 Secondary Entrance Assessment Examination which identified several students about to enter the secondary school system with numeracy and literacy deficits. These students are spread across 56 secondary schools in the seven education districts.

Diagnostic testing was conducted to identify the specific content and skill gaps among students in Mathematics and English Language Arts inclusive of Creative Writing. The results revealed a total of 2,478 students with English Language deficits, 2,619 with Mathematics deficits and 1,794 with both English Language and Mathematics deficits. Teacher training has also been conducted to equip teachers with skills and strategies to help students fill the knowledge gap. This followed workshops with principals, teachers, school supervisors and district teams aimed at sensitising stakeholders to the various needs of the individual learners as well as their role in re-tooling the students.

Minister Garcia said, “We are in the business of education and it is our mandate to ensure that every child in this country, who is of school age, has an opportunity to access quality education. If we are to ensure that our children benefit from the quality education that we are supposed to give to our students, there must be certain things in place.” Chief Education Officer Harrilal Seecharan added that the initiative is aligned to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals 2015 – 2030, one of which is to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote life-long learning opportunities for all.” The initiative will produce more non-traditional techniques for content delivery and will modify the curriculum to make it more relevant to the 21st century learner.